French cuisine has developed through centuries of history and artistic tradition. It has a rich history of regional variations and courtly cooking, and with Escoffier’s innovative systematization in the 20th century, it became the foundation of the world’s haute cuisine. As a result, French cuisine is still regarded as one of the best in the world.
Cooking is a fundamental part of our lives today. The history of cooking goes back so far that traces of grains cooked or steamed in water can be found on Stone Age pottery. Not only that, but every culture has developed its own style of cooking and expanded horizontally. While each and every one of them is unique and has its own excellence, French cuisine is recognized as the most representative lineage of professional haute cuisine. This doesn’t just come from the pride that good wine and food are a big part of French culture. French cuisine is recognized worldwide, with UNESCO declaring it an intangible cultural heritage in 2010. So what makes French cuisine so different from other countries’ cuisines?
France has a wide range of climates and terrain, from the warm Mediterranean port city of Marseille to the cold plateau of Champagne, where champagne originates, so it would be pointless to describe the characteristics of every region’s cuisine. Instead, we’ll focus on courtly cuisine and the professional cooking styles of Paris, where French excellence is best represented and documented.
France is no longer a monarchy, so there is no true courtly cooking style. However, many recipes have been passed down through various sources and have been recreated and studied by many chefs. The oldest of these sources is Le Viandier de Taillevent. This book was written by Taillevent, who began working at the court of Charles IV and was the chief chef at the court of Charles VI. The 206 dishes, sauces, and ingredient preparation instructions in this book tell us a lot about court cuisine of the time.
The recipes in this book are a testament to classic French court cuisine, and even then, the French chefs’ passion for flavor, color, and presentation is evident. There are more than 30 spices used in the recipes, and European spices such as saffron are often used, as well as Asian spices such as nutmeg and cumin. It also notes the importance of color as well as flavor, with sauces separated by color and flavor, such as green garlic sauce and white garlic sauce. The decoration of dishes was also emphasized. Not only are there recipes for edible decorations, such as how to make a terrace out of bread, but also purely decorative ones, such as how to make a wooden tower out of linen to give it a stone-like texture. The existence of these records in Le Viandier shows that cooking in France was considered an art, not just a way to make food taste good.
Furthermore, it’s no secret that wine plays an important role in French cuisine, and this book is no exception. Many efforts were made to improve the quality of wine, such as how to make it redder, how to remove astringency, and how to reverse sourness. It’s a testament to wine’s place in French cuisine, past and present.
Le Viandier shows the importance of decoration, presentation, and wine in French cuisine, as well as taste and color. Gradually, however, decoration and presentation became overemphasized, and the larger the banquet, the more French haute cuisine focused on the presentation rather than the food itself. Recipes became more and more complex, buffets where food was displayed cold became the norm, and the essence of cooking was lost.
Georges Auguste Escoffier was the innovator who changed this. He is considered the greatest French chef of the 20th century and is still revered by many today. There’s even a story about a hotel chef in Morocco who has the cover of Escoffier’s classic book, Le Guide Culinaire, tattooed across his back. Escoffier’s most important achievement was the codification of French prix fixe cuisine. He believed that food is best enjoyed when it’s hot and freshly cooked, and he revolutionized the restaurant industry by popularizing the practice of serving food in individual portions rather than displaying it in bulk. He was also the first to divide up tasks in the kitchen. The way he categorized kitchens in the 20th century is still used around the world. Escoffier’s ideas were incorporated into French haute cuisine, and French cuisine is now the foundation for all Western haute cuisine styles. Have you ever wondered when the next dish will be served at a fine dining restaurant, wondered why there are so many forks, or noticed how the food on your table looks exactly the same? It’s no exaggeration to say that Escoffier’s influence is all of those things.
Escoffier’s influence didn’t stop at cooking methodology; the biggest change he made to French cuisine as a whole was codifying the recipes for the five major French sauces (Bechamel, Espagnole, Hollandaise, Tomato, and Veloute). While sauces, one of the defining characteristics of French cuisine, have always varied in flavor depending on the person making them, Escoffier created a systematic set of recipes based on these five sauces. This was an important step in ensuring that French cuisine could be enjoyed with the same quality anywhere in the world. This systematization played a big role in French cuisine being recognized internationally as one of the best.
French cuisine is as historic and diverse as any other, but what makes it the best is more than just the taste, it’s the artistic tradition and the genius chefs who helped codify modern cuisine. While every culture’s cuisine has its own unique excellence, it’s safe to say that no other style of cooking has had such an enormous impact on restaurants around the world as French cuisine.
